The banksman standing behind a reversing artic is one of the most familiar sights in any yard - and one of the most dangerous. People are killed every year in workplace transport incidents, and a significant share of those deaths involve reversing vehicles and the very people trying to guide them. That is why HSE’s workplace transport guidance contains a sentence every transport manager should be able to recite: you should only consider employing a banksman or signaller where there is no other way to control reversing risks.
Read that again, because it inverts the common assumption. A banksman is not the standard solution to reversing. A banksman is the last resort, deployed only when the physical and organisational controls have failed to remove the risk.
Before anyone reaches for a hi-viz and a torch, HSE expects the yard to be engineered against reversing. The control sequence runs roughly: remove the need to reverse at all - one-way systems, drive-through loading bays, and layout changes so vehicles arrive and leave going forward; then segregate vehicles from people - barriers, marked pedestrian walkways, exclusion zones around reversing areas, and keeping drivers in cabs during loading where safe; then aids on the vehicle - mirrors, cameras, reversing alarms, sensors; and only then, for the residual risk that genuinely cannot be engineered out, a trained banksman.
Most yards that “need” a banksman for every delivery actually need a site visit and a sketch pad. A one-way circuit and a marked exclusion zone eliminate most of what the banksman is currently compensating for - permanently, and without putting a person in the danger zone.
Some situations legitimately remain: tight urban deliveries where the vehicle must reverse into a confined space off the public road, unusual one-off movements, sites where layout change is physically impossible. In those cases the banksman must be deployed properly, and HSE’s expectations are clear in shape.
The banksman must be trained for the role - not just experienced, but instructed in the signals to be used and the safe positions to work from. They must stand where the driver can see them at all times - in the driver’s line of sight, never directly behind the vehicle where the blind spot is total and the crush risk is fatal. If the driver loses sight of the banksman, the rule is absolute: stop. The movement does not continue until visual contact is restored.
Signals need to be agreed and unambiguous. The classic failure is two people waving different instructions, or hand signals the driver interprets differently from the person giving them. Agree the signal set - HSE publishes standard signals - make sure both parties know it before the vehicle moves, and in poor light use illuminated wands or other visible aids.
Someone in authority has to own reversing safety on site. That means: the site rules on reversing are written and communicated to every driver including visitors; the decision to use a banksman is made deliberately, not by habit; banksmen are identifiable, trained and actually used according to the training; and near-misses are reported and acted on, because near-misses are the free warnings that precede the serious injury.
The risk assessment is the spine. HSE expects workplace transport risks to be assessed, and the assessment is where the decision - banksman or better control - gets recorded and justified. If the assessment says a banksman is needed for bay 3 because the layout cannot change, that is a documented, defensible position. If there is no assessment at all and a banksman is just “how we do it”, the organisation is exposed the first time something goes wrong - and in workplace transport, when it goes wrong it is rarely minor.
A banksman is a control of last resort, deployed where no physical or organisational alternative can manage the reversing risk - trained, visible to the driver, using agreed signals, with an absolute stop rule when visual contact breaks. Everything else is engineering: remove the reversing, separate the people, aid the driver. The safest banksman in your yard is the one you redesigned the layout to no longer need.
The roles get conflated, and the distinction matters for training. A banksman (or signaller) directs vehicle movements - the reversing artic into the bay. A traffic marshal manages the flow of vehicles across a site - routing arrivals, controlling the gate, keeping the one-way system honest. Some yards need both, some need neither, and a person doing both jobs needs training that covers both. The common failure is the untrained volunteer: the loader who “helps out” guiding a reversing trailer without training, without agreed signals, and without the driver ever having confirmed they can see them. That informal arrangement is the worst of all worlds - a person in the danger zone with none of the controls that make the trained role defensible. If anyone in your operation guides vehicles, name the role, train the person, and write the signals down.